“Someone may say, ‘I am allowed to do anything,’ but not everything is helpful.” 1 Corinthians 6:12 (GW)

Successful people know what matters, and they don’t waste time worrying about what doesn’t matter.

The apostle Paul said, “I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us” (Philippians 3:13-14 NLT). Paul didn’t dabble in 40 things or pack his calendar. He stayed laser focused on God’s calling to share the Good News of Jesus.

Learning to focus on what really matters in life is a skill—and like any skill, it takes practice.

You don’t have time to do everything you want to do or think you need to do. But the good news is that God doesn’t expect you to do everything. And there are only a few things in life worth doing in the first place.

God hasn’t called you to do everything in life. He’s called you to do what he made you and shaped you to do—and there is just enough time for that.

There will be a lot of things in life that are good but aren’t all that important. The Bible says, “Someone may say, ‘I am allowed to do anything,’ but not everything is helpful” (1 Corinthians 6:12 GW).

You’re free to do what you want with your life. God isn’t going to force you to do anything! You can waste your life, you can spend your life, or you can invest your life.

Everything is permissible—but not everything is beneficial. Some things in life are not necessarily wrong; they’re just not necessary.

You’ll save yourself a lot of time and energy if you learn and practice the skill of knowing what matters most and then devoting your life to it. You figure out what God has put you here on earth to do, and then you get right to it! 

The better you get at selecting and prioritizing what matters in your life, the more effective you’re going to be as a person, as a spouse, as a parent, and as a leader.